Outdoor Living

Dock talk: Cottaging lore

Are today's cottages really cottages or mostly fancy city housea that happens to be on a lake?

Photograph by: Brent Foster
, National Post

'I don't know how you can call that a cottage," says the 70-ish fellow having a drink with me on a friend's Muskoka dock. He was pointing to the neighbour's place: The cottage is likely 5,000 square feet, air-conditioned and filled with technology. "It's a fancy city house that happens to be on a lake," he says. I reply: "I guess things were different when you first started coming up here."

To make it clear he isn't an addle-brained old-timer, nostalgic for a past that might never have been as charming as remembered, the crusty guy looks me straight in the eye: "I'm not being sentimental."

He continues as if he is in a trial. (I find out later he is a retired lawyer and comes from an old-money family, the kind you're familiar with because downtown Toronto streets are named after them.) "Why come here if you have the same life as you do in town? People are afraid to rough it a bit and unplug from their TV. Some people are afraid of silence and that's why they come up here and bring the city with them."

I venture there are still remote areas where people cottage without power or plumbing. "Of course, but I'm talking about mainstream people's expectations. When I was a kid and came to my family's place, life changed. We had a big place but it was spartan. We spent all day on the water. No one spent all day on a jet ski and called that getting exercise. No wonder kids are fat now."

His family's place was near Port Carling, on one of the big Muskoka lakes. "Not winterized - that made it very special because it was a short season. You had to have a fire at night - and no air-conditioning," he says. "That was the point, you came up here because it was cooler. - We even shared bathrooms."

What did you do during the day? "My mother would tell us after lunch that she didn't want to see us until dinner," he says. "We would take the canoe out, go to the other side of the lake, visit the neighbours. Dinner was usually eaten on the terrace. My mother had a girl up all summer to help, but we had to do most things ourselves. I learned to wash dishes and had to sweep the decks. I took sailing lessons on the weekends. When my dad came up [my mother was there all summer] we would go for a long boat ride. All the parents had parties on the weekends at each other's places, there were few clubs and they were mostly for tourists. Everyone got drunk and went home early."

He sips his drink. "It was more fun than people have today. I think everyone wants to impress each other up here with how rich and important they are, and they're missing the point about cottages, being Canadian and trying to appreciate a landscape the whole world envies." He shakes his head: "You know the type. Women with high heels on the dock, men never off they cell phones making deals."

I say: "They don't know what they're missing."

The distinguished gent nods in agreement, and excuses himself with, "I think I'll get another G&T."

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